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“Is your skin color holding you back?”

Never have my ears perked and head raised so quickly to pay attention to my T.V. screen as when I heard those words, and that of the commercial that followed.

“White Squad is a team of carefully selected white representatives who act on behalf of people of color. We’re your stand-ins for life’s racially unbalanced situations.”

At first I couldn’t decide if this was a real commercial or some kind of skit from a crew similar to CollegeHumor.com or Friends of the People. The idea of hiring a “white representative” to hail a cab, get a better apartment, or stand in for you at court, couldn’t be possible, right? That couldn’t be a real thing. But, the more the commercial goes on, the more believable it gets. The acting is mediocre and sarcastic, but never over the top. The production is top notch. The logo is professionally designed and the format is well thought out.

Needless to say, my eyes and ears stayed glued to the picture box hanging on the wall until the end of the spot, still waiting for the punchline reveal. When I didn’t get that, I immediately turned to my phone to follow the CTA to the White Squad website. Much to my disappointment, the site was down, which I can only assume was a result of a mass influx of curious viewers such as myself – or maybe my internet just wasn’t cooperating.

After finally connecting to the WhiteSquad website (on my laptop,) the professionally produced facade continued with a smooth and fully built out experience including a ‘Services,’ ‘How it Works,’ ‘Our Team’ and ‘FAQ’ page. After browsing around the site, the secret is finally revealed when you try to actually request a service. An animation ensues, taking over the screen and revealing “White privilege is real. White Squad is fiction.”

Brought to you as part of MTV’s Look Different campaign, White Squad is an (effective) effort to bring more awareness to prejudice in our day-to-day lives. This ad in particular is a satirical stab at white privilege, and whether you agree or disagree with the campaign and the commercial’s approach, this ad is sure to get people to pay attention at least until the end of the spot. As can be expected, Mashable points out in their review that responses to the ad via social media have varied widely.

What do you think about the new White Squad campaign from MTV? Let me know in the comment below or on Twitter – @HOOKDin. Also, be sure to subscribe to get the next Ad Spotlight delivered right to your inbox.

In last week’s app review, I mentioned how smartphones have primarily become time wasters killers. Many of the spare seconds we have are spent scrolling through Facebook, browsing Twitter, and of course, playing games. I personally am a gamer at heart, so to no surprise, most of my smartphone time killing comes in the form of games. Well, I’ve found a new game that has proven to be quite good at helping me kill time, and also happens to be pretty awesome – True Skate.

Have you ever spent hours trying to find the perfect source to cite in you paper, or find a statistic that supports a product you are trying to sell? Or maybe you stumbled across an article a while back on a particular site and now you need to find it again. These can be frustrating tasks when you’re using a search engine such as Google, but if you know exactly what to enter, you’ll quickly become a search engine pro.

Now that smartphones have been around for a while, and the technology is starting to plateau, it’s interesting to see how people are using them. In my observation (no research to back this up,) smartphones have really become a distraction, time killing, entertainment device, occasionally used for communication. Think about it. When smartphones first came onto the scene, it was all about productivity paired with connectivity. Now, we’re primarily using our phones to browse through Twitter, scroll through Facebook, get sucked into a Reddit rabbit hole, play games, etc. This is something I haven’t paid attention to until I downloaded the Food.com app for Android and realized, “Hey, this magic device along with this app can actually make my life easier.”

Hey, thanks for stopping by! HOOKD.in is a site dedicated to technology and advertising, where you can find articles including news, reviews and how-tos. If you like staying informed about recent product releases, tech conferences, software and apps, as well as brands of all sizes and their marketing campaigns, stick around – you’re sure to find something here you’re in to!

Father’s Day may have come and gone, but the feels from Dove’s #RealStrength campaign is still in full effect. Starting by airing the first spot during the Super Bowl, the campaign focuses on how men can show their real strength in how they care – how they care for others, and an even larger focus on how they care for their kids.

The latest spot for the Men + Care #RealStrength campaign centers around the moment that men find out they are going to be a father for the first time. After spotlighting the emotion of these real men, the ad displays on-screen copy that states “Real strength means showing you care even from the very first moment.”

It appears I’ve been blinded by ignorance when it comes to web browsers for my Android phone. Somehow last week, can’t really remember how, I stumbled upon an app called Opera. Upon first glance, I almost scrolled right past it thinking the “O” stood for Oprah, or that the non-stylized red character represented the Overstock shopping app – that’s just the vibe I got from the icon. But, as it turns out, this is actually a popular (50 million downloads popular) alternate browser that I’ve come to realize may likely become my new daily driver. Here’s why.

This year’s E3 conference was packed full of exciting announcements, reveals, trailers, hardware and more. Unless you dedicated those few days to keeping up with all the action, it’s likely you missed some big announcements. Somehow, one announcement that I find particularly interesting and game-changing slid under my radar, and after reading about it days later, I couldn’t believe I haven’t heard more hype about it.

In an original post on Gamespot.com, author Rob Crossley writes “Sony brought an end to several years of Microsoft timed-exclusivity of Call of Duty DLC on Monday (last week), announcing on its stage at E3 2015 that Black Ops 3 add-on content will be coming to PlayStation 4 first.”

So, you own, or work for, a small business, and your marketing budget is small – almost non-existent – what can you do? Contrary to popular belief, marketing doesn’t have to be expensive! There are plenty of cost-effective means of getting your brand and message out there, you just have to get creative and put in the work. One thing’s for sure. If you abandon your marketing strategy, your brand could suffer, and you might be missing out on bringing in new and return customers. Take a look at some of the low-cost marketing ideas below.

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon

What does it take to be the best in your industry? It takes time, a team, a vision, a good product, but maybe most importantly, it takes a brand. A solid brand gives your current and potential customers something to hold on to. Instead of just buying a product and being done with you, having a brand helps build relationships and foster loyalty among your audience. You can have a great product and team, but if you don’t have a great brand then you’re creating more work for yourself and potentially missing out on a deeper connection with your customer.

So, whether your about start on something new, or have been in existence for a while, here are 5 tips for building a better brand.